The subtraction principle
Why mastery comes through inner minimalism
The midday sun beat down. I thrust the shovel into earth. Dust rose. Sweat ran.
This was my task now. Dig my own grave.
Hour after hour, I dug. Hands blistered, then calloused. Muscles ached. The hole took shape slowly. A simple rectangle. Long enough for my body. Deep enough to contain me.
Nothing elegant about this work. Nothing complex. Just the rhythm of removing what wasn't needed to create the space that was.
With each shovelful of earth, something became clear: transformation doesn't come through addition. It comes through removal.
The addiction to more
Most of us approach mastery backward. We believe to become more, we must gather more—more knowledge, techniques, credentials, tools. We collect and compile, convinced that with enough acquisition, transformation will follow.
I've seen this pattern in every leader I coach. They build careers through continuous gathering—skills developed, knowledge acquired, capabilities expanded. This collection serves them well, until it doesn't. Until they hit a ceiling that no gathering seems able to break through.
What they discover—what I discovered standing beside that half-dug hole under the relentless sun—is that the next level of mastery comes not through accumulation but through inner minimalism.
The Michelangelo insight
Michelangelo once explained how he created his masterpiece David: "I simply removed everything that wasn't David."
The marble already contained the masterpiece. The artist's genius wasn't adding anything. It was clearing away what obscured the essential form.
Your leadership, your presence, your capacity for transformation already exists. The expansion you seek doesn't require building something new but revealing what's already there beneath layers of accumulated complexity.
The challenge of less
By mid-afternoon, my arms ached with fatigue. The hole was taking shape, but progress had slowed. I paused, leaning on my shovel, questioning whether I had the strength to continue.
In that moment of doubt, I noticed something: I was digging with unnecessary force. Tensing muscles that didn't need to be tensed. Expending energy that didn't need to be expended. Making the work harder than it needed to be.
I shifted approach—not by trying harder but by letting go of excess effort. Found a rhythm that worked with gravity rather than against it. The digging continued, but now with flow rather than struggle.
This, too, is inner minimalism—the clearing away not just of external obstacles but of internal ones. Releasing unnecessary effort, the very striving that often blocks what we seek.
The counter-response to plateaus
When leaders hit plateaus, their instinct is almost always to do more, try harder, layer on new approaches. They double down on the patterns that created their ceiling.
The subtraction principle invites a different response:
What if you need less, not more?
What if the next level of your mastery lives in the space created by clearing away?
What if your effectiveness expands not through gathering but through simplifying?
Consider what you might clear away:
The need to have all the answers
Attachment to being the expert
Complexity that obscures clarity
Urgency that displaces presence
Control that prevents emergence
Each removal creates space—space where something new can emerge without being forced.
The emptying process
The grave was finally complete as afternoon light softened. I stood before it, exhausted yet clearheaded. The physical labor had emptied me in a way necessary for what would come next.
I realized the digging had been more than preparation. It was itself part of the transformation—the tangible experience of creating through removal, making space for something new not by gathering but by clearing away.
This emptying wasn't just physical. It was mental, emotional, spiritual. The exertion of digging had quieted the incessant chatter of my mind. The focus on simple, repetitive action had cleared away unnecessary complexity. The concrete nature of the task had grounded abstract intentions in tangible reality.
In leadership development, we often overlook this emptying process. We focus on filling leaders with new ideas, new frameworks, new techniques. We rarely create conditions where they can empty themselves of what's no longer needed—the assumptions, patterns, and identities that have reached completion but remain through habit or attachment.
The resistance to subtraction
Why is subtraction so challenging? Because we've been conditioned to equate more with better. More knowledge. More skills. More tools. More accomplishments.
Our educational systems reward accumulation, not discernment. Our professional cultures celebrate visible addition, not invisible subtraction. Our economic models value constant growth, not strategic simplification.
This conditioning creates a particular kind of resistance to the subtraction principle—the fear that less means diminishment rather than expansion.
Standing beside the completed grave, I felt this resistance directly. Part of me questioned whether this emptying, this symbolic death, would leave me diminished rather than transformed. Whether letting go of familiar patterns would create liberation or just void.
This resistance isn't just psychological. It's existential—connected to fundamental questions about who we are and what gives our lives meaning. If I'm not defined by what I know, what I do, what I achieve, then who am I?
The subtraction principle invites us to discover the answer experientially. Not through new theories or concepts, but through the direct experience of what remains when the unnecessary falls away.
The practical minimalism
Inner minimalism isn't abstract philosophy. It's practical approach to leadership and life.
Consider decisions. Most leaders overwhelm themselves with excessive information, analysis, and options. They mistake complexity for thoroughness. The subtraction principle suggests stripping decision processes to their essentials—focusing only on what truly matters, eliminating unnecessary variables, creating space for wisdom to emerge.
Consider communication. We add qualifiers, elaborations, repetitions. We hedge and complicate. The subtraction principle invites removing everything that doesn't serve clarity and connection. Not to create simplistic messages but to reveal essential ones.
Consider strategic planning. Organizations pile initiative upon initiative, goal upon goal, metric upon metric. The subtraction principle asks what might happen if we removed half of these elements. Would the result be diminishment—or greater focus, alignment, and impact?
In each domain, the invitation is the same: Remove what isn't essential to reveal what is.
The revealed capacity
As sunset approached, I completed the final preparations for the night vigil. The grave was dug. The ceremonial circle established. The items for the overnight ritual arranged.
I sat at the edge of the grave, reflecting on the day's work. What struck me most wasn't what I had accomplished but what had been revealed through the process of subtraction.
Capacities I rarely accessed in daily life had emerged naturally. The physical endurance to dig for hours under the hot sun. The patience to work methodically without rushing. The presence to notice subtle signals from my body about necessary adjustments. The surrender to a process whose outcome I couldn't fully control.
These weren't new capacities I had developed through the day's work. They were existing ones that emerged when unnecessary layers were removed. My usual patterns of rushing, controlling, and intellectualizing had been temporarily cleared away, revealing capacities that existed beneath them.
This is another dimension of the subtraction principle: the capacities you seek often already exist within you, covered over by habits and patterns that no longer serve.
Removing these accumulated layers doesn't diminish you. It reveals more of who you already are.
This week's practice: The art of inner minimalism
If the subtraction principle resonates with you, here are practices to engage with it directly:
1. Identify your complexity
What areas of your leadership have become unnecessarily complex? Where might there be a simpler way hidden beneath accumulated layers? Notice not just external complexity but internal as well—the mental and emotional complications you bring to situations.
2. Experiment with clearing away
Choose one area where gathering has reached diminishing returns. Instead of adding a new approach, identify something to remove—a belief, process, habit, or assumption. What space might this create? Start small but be specific.
3. Notice the resistance
As you consider clearing away, notice any discomfort or resistance. Our attachment to what we've gathered runs deep. Simply witnessing this attachment without judgment creates the possibility of release. What fears arise when you consider having or doing less?
4. Practice simplicity
For one week, approach challenges with the question: "What's the simplest way this could work?" Notice how this shifts your thinking from complexity toward essence. Not simplistic solutions, but elegant ones that accomplish more with less.
The space is where the music lives
Next week, we'll explore the space principle—how transformation happens in the spaces between words, between actions, between identities, and how creating and holding these spaces enables breakthroughs that constant activity prevents.
Until then, I invite you to experiment with inner minimalism—to notice where you might accomplish more by doing less, where clearing away might reveal more than adding on, where the capacity you seek might already exist beneath accumulated layers.
Remember: the hole I dug wasn't valuable for what it contained, but for the space it created—space where transformation could happen. The same is true for the spaces you create through inner minimalism in your leadership and life.
If this perspective resonates with you, consider sharing with others who might benefit. Next week's newsletter will explore the space principle—how transformation happens in the spaces between words, actions, and identities.